About the Green Pack

This CD-ROM was created as part of the Green Pack, a collection of instructional materials for environmental education. The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe developed the Green Pack with support from the Toyota Environmental Activities Grant Program and the Toyota Social Contributions Fund and assistance from a number of European environmentalists and experts.

In addition to this CD-ROM, the Green Pack includes several educational components, including a handbook with lesson plans for teachers, a video cassette with environmental video clips and longer films, an environmental game and student fact sheets. The Pack is designed for use in Hungarian primary schools. It is offered free of charge.


CD-ROM Development

Author	- Kliment Mindjov
With assistance from	- Robert Atkinson, Mira Mileva, Steven Graning
Case studies	- Andreas Beckmann, Christer Agren, Erzsebet Beliczay, Gabor Heves, Gerald Francoj, Grazyna Krzywkowska, Hans Nordstand, Jozsef Gayer, Kelly Friesen, Kszysztof Kaminiecki, Paul Csagoly, Pavel Antonov, Per Elvingson, Piotr Matczak, Robert Nemeskeri, Sarah Roe, Stoyan Yotov, Tom Popper
Dilemmas	- Robert Atkinson
Tests	- Kliment Mindjov, Robert Atkinson
Glossary	- Steven Graning
Editing	- Steven Graning
Illustrations	- Laszlo Falvay, Nelly Marinova, Stoyan Nikolov
Design	- Ferenc Navratil, Gergo Kornek, Nora Miskolczi, Sylvia Magyar
Programming	- Almos Rajnai
Website	- Nikola Bourov, Vadim Ostapenko
Project Management	- Kliment Mindjov

Acknowledgements

The development of the Green Pack CD-ROM was made possible by the cooperation and good will of many individuals and organisations that contributed to its content.

We are grateful to a number of Bulgarian, Hungarian and Polish teachers: Agnes Boddi Schroth, Andras Keri, Anna Gajer, Anna Schindler, Anna Talik, Atanaska Margaritova, Barbara Kekusz, Elena Usheva, Gyorgy Bertalan, Honorata Waszkiewicz, Izabela Majstruk, Jacek Schindler, Jerzy Sadowski, Jozefa Magdalena Ciszkowska, Judit Heszlenyi Szaszne, Justyna Jedrzejewska, Maria Pirgova, Malgorzata Cydeyko, Malgorzata Podkanska, Miroslawa Sliwka, Tatyana Miteva, and Urszula Osmolska-Jung, for the valuable lesson plans included in the CD-ROM.

We also wish to thank Laszlo Falvay (Hungary), Nelly Marinova (Bulgaria) and Stoyan Nikolov (Bulgaria) for their imaginative illustrations, as well as the Bat Research and Protection Group, Branislav Peric, BTA, the Daphne Centre for Applied Ecology, the Eagle Conservation Committee, Green Balkans, the Group for Speleological and Sub-Aquatic Exploration, the Heves County Environmental Protection Agency, Nicolae Iordache, MTI, Raili Nugin, the Society for the Protection of Birds, Lulzim Syla, the Toad Action Group, Wijnand Udema, the Wilderness Fund, the Wolf Forest Protection Movement, Laszlo Balogh (Reuters), Vassil Donev (EPA Photo, European Commission), Attila Kisbenedek (EPA Photo, European Commission), Pavel Antonov, Sergiu Serban, Sylvia Magyar, Ivan Kozhuharov (Prina Consult), the REC's NGO Grants Archive, and Reuters, all for their impressive photos.

We wish to express our warmest gratitude to the Television Trust for Environment (TVE-International) and the Borrowed Nature Association (Bulgaria), which provided us with various environmental video clips.

We are grateful to Svitlana Kravchenko and Mary Taylor (European Eco Forum) for their valuable materials on the Aarhus Convention.

We extend our most sincere thanks to our donors from the Toyota Motor Corporation and the Toyota Foundation. Their understanding and trust encouraged us throughout the months of hard work on the Green Pack.


About the REC

The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC) is a non-partisan, non-advocacy, not-for-profit organisation with a mission to assist in solving environmental problems in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The Center fulfils this mission by encouraging cooperation among non-governmental organisations, governments, businesses and other environmental stakeholders, by supporting the free exchange of information and by promoting public participation in environmental decision-making.

The REC was established in 1990 by the United States, the European Commission and Hungary. Today, the REC is legally based on a Charter signed by the governments of 27 countries and the European Commission, and on an International Agreement with the Government of Hungary. The REC has its head office in Szentendre, Hungary and local offices in each of its 15 beneficiary CEE countries, which are: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, FYR Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Recent donors are the European Commission and the governments of Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Switzerland the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as other inter-governmental and private institutions.

The Toyota Environmental Activities Grant Program and the Toyota Social Contributions Fund have supported the REC to produce the Green Pack for use by teachers and students in Europe. This free product is a part of the REC's work on environmental education under the Environmental Capacity Building Programme. Through this programme the REC is trying to increase the individual capacity of present and future environmental trainers and teachers and to support the development of institutions and programmes for environmental capacity building and education in CEE.


About Toyota

The Toyota Environmental Activities Grant Program was established in 2000, in commemoration of Toyota Motor Corporation's (TMC) receipt of the Global 500 Award* in 1999 from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Based on the theme of "Social Investment for Sustainable Development," the programme provides grants to practical, regionally rooted projects in Japan and overseas. The TMC and The Toyota Foundation jointly administer the programme. The selection committee, consisting of a group of experts from Japan and abroad, based its selections on considerations of the feasibility of the applicants' activities, the prospects of such activities for future development, their need for support and how well they benefit their local communities. Recipients are carrying out highly feasible, regionally based projects with local fields of operations that better address the needs of their immediate communities. In the future TMC hopes to provide even further support to well-established programs on a more global scale.

* Established by UNEP to recognise individuals or organisations that contribute to greater environmental protection or improvement in terms of sustainable development. TMC received the award in 1999 for its efforts to build a comprehensive system of environmental management. These efforts included TMC's development of the world's first mass-produced hybrid vehicle, achieving ISO 14001 certification and active disclosure of environmental data.


References

Information included in the CD-ROM was drawn from the following comprehensive reports, assessments and educational materials:

• State of the World, Lester Brown, World Watch Institute Reports, 1995-2000.
  
• Living in the Environment, Ninth Edition, G.Tyler Miller, Jr., 1996.
  
• Europe's Environment: The Dobris Assessment, European Environmental Agency, 1995.
  
• Europe's Environment : The Second Assessment, European Environmental Agency, 1998.
  
• Caring for our Future, Action for Europe's Environment, European Commission, 1999.
  
• Environment in the European Union at the Turn of the Century, European Environmental Agency, 1999.
  
• Children's health and environment: A review of evidence, WHO Regional Office for Europe, EEA, 2002.
  
• Learn about chemicals around your house, US Environmental Protection Agency, 2001.